Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Lithuania’s highest court agreed to
examine the constitutionality of legislation behind plans to
build a liquefied natural-gas terminal in the country, as
requested by members of the new ruling coalition.

The Constitutional Court in Vilnius said today it would
rule on terms of a law and a decree of the outgoing government
that give ownership of the project to state-controlled
Klaipedos Nafta AB, allow it to be financed partly by raising
fees for gas transmission and require natural gas companies
working in the country to buy at least 25 percent of their
annual throughput from the future terminal.

Members of Premier-designate Algirdas Butkevicius’s Social
Democrat party, including three ministers in his proposed
Cabinet, were among 30 lawmakers who challenged the project,
according to the statement on the court’s website.

Seeking to diversify its gas imports from Russia’s Gazprom,
Lithuania plans to start operations at a new floating LNG
terminal on the Baltic Sea coast in late 2014. Klaipedos Nafta,
the operator, in March signed a 10-year, $689 million agreement
with Hoegh LNG to lease the terminal.